The Epistle of James mentions Jesus by name only twice. Yet it contains more than 180 possible references to his teachings. Paul’s letters are similar, echoing Jesus’ words and instruction again and again. Why would the New Testament writers refer so often to Jesus’ teachings, but comparatively rarely refer to his name? They did so because they expected their hearers and readers to recognize the voice behind the words.

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15–16)

Jesus directly taught the twelve apostles who were with him from his baptism through his resurrection. He taught them his words and they memorized his teachings.

I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. (2 Peter 3:2)

Modern readers often imagine the twelve apostles as sincere but bumbling doofuses, while the “real” authors of the Bible were figures like Mark and Luke, who interviewed the apostles and recorded their memories before anyone forgot them. But that assumption says more about us than about them. We are modern people who often misunderstand oral societies. The early church understood that the oral teaching handed down from the apostles had priority over the written record.

The purpose of the written Gospel was not to replace oral memory but to assist in its faithful reproduction. This is probably why John Mark traveled with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey.

When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper. (Acts 13:5)

The word translated “helper” in Acts 13:5 is the same Greek word Luke uses at the beginning of his Gospel, where it is translated “servants.”

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. (Luke 1:1–2)

Mark was most likely a “servant of the word,” not simply a person who carried Paul and Barnabas’ bags. His role would have been to teach the direct words of Jesus, which, according to church tradition, he learned from Peter.

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)

When New Testament writers speak of “the word of God” or “the word of the Lord,” they are often referring quite literally to the Lord’s own words. That conviction is central to why the New Testament was compiled. The church believed that Jesus is God, and therefore his words are the words of God. Just as Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus were recorded and compiled to preserve the direct words of God, so also was the New Testament. Both served as memory aids, helping God’s people remember and faithfully repeat the word of God.

But how accurate is the Gospel memory of Jesus’ words? Were his words changed or redacted in order to support later theological developments in the early church?

One of the strongest proofs that the Gospels convey the actual words of Jesus is that Jesus uses different vocabulary depending on the audience he is addressing. He teaches different subjects and gives different content to different audiences. When he speaks with his disciples, he uses certain words that he does not use when he speaks to the crowds or to his opponents. Even when the wording varies slightly across the Gospels, his word choice for each audience is recorded with remarkable consistency.

As the great J.Arthur Baird noted, Jesus uses nineteen words only when speaking to his disciples and to no other audience. Of these, four appear with especially high frequency: “disciple,” “brother,” “slave,” and “little one.” All four appear in Matthew 18, our Scripture for this week, where Jesus is privately addressing the disciples.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:1–20)

Matthew 18 is not primarily a procedural manual for church discipline, nor is it merely advice about what to do when someone sins against us. Jesus is answering a deeper question from his disciples: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

If we want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, we must always be working to restore wayward believers to the sheepfold.

Notice that Jesus does not say, “Get people to come back to church.” Jesus preaches the kingdom of God, not the church. Jesus uses the word “church” only twice in Matthew. For Jesus, the church and the kingdom of God are not identical.

The kingdom of God comes into existence when Jesus comes. It is permanently and completely established through Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. Even if everyone rejected Jesus, the kingdom of God would still exist. Jesus is King whether anyone accepts it or not.

The church consists of those who have welcomed the kingdom and the King. The church is not the King. It does not bring the kingdom into existence; Jesus does. It does not control the kingdom; Jesus does. It holds no power in the kingdom apart from him; Jesus holds all power and authority there. The church is not the mediator of the kingdom. There is only one mediator between God and humanity: the man Christ Jesus.

This is why Jesus does not tell us to go to the pastor or the elder when somebody sins. The goal is not to bring the sinning person to pastors or elders, but to bring that person to Jesus. In the New Testament, there is no hierarchy among believers. There are only brothers and sisters. A family may have older children or children with particular responsibilities. But in Jesus’ church, there is only one leader, one shepherd, one master, one teacher, one Father, and one Lord.

Because we start with our own modern understanding of “church” when we read Jesus’ references to the “church” in the gospels, we think that in Matthew 18:17, Jesus saying “tell it to the church” means “go and tell the pastor”.

We think of church as a hierarchy, so we think of Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 18 as escalating a conflict up the ranks. We think Jesus is telling us to try dealing with a conflict by ourselves before we report it to somebody with more authority.

But when we recognize that the word “church” in the New Testament means “the assembly”, not “institutional leadership”, we get a different escalation related to number of Christians. It starts with one brother, then two to three brothers, and finally the assembly of all the brothers.

Dealing with the conflict of another brother is not about calling the police when they don’t listen to you. It’s about lovingly bringing more brothers to get a brother back on the right track, like a body recruits more antibodies for the maintenance of the health of the body.

We can see Paul putting Jesus’ instructions into practice (like usual) in 1 Corinthians 5 when he instructs the Corinthians to hand the sinner over to Satan when they are all gathered together in the name of the Lord. This is not an example of church leadership exercising its authority to carry out church discipline, but instead a carrying out of the command of the only church authority, Jesus Christ.

The church is never entrusted to the elders as though the Lord were absent. The church belongs only and always to the Lord. This is why Jesus is present even when two people gather in his name, and why, if even two agree, it is done for them by Jesus’ Father in heaven.

The language of “binding” in Matthew 18:18 relates to teaching. That is, it concerns which teachings are binding and which are loosed. Wayward brothers and sisters are brought back by applying the teaching of Jesus. What restores people from sin is showing them where they have departed from the words of Jesus.

That is the heart of today’s Scripture. Jesus teaches us to win back sinning brothers and sisters to the Lord as two or three fellow believers apply the teachings of Christ to them. Restoration is not mainly about proving that we are right or persuading someone to behave differently. It is about bringing the Lord’s own words to bear on a wandering life. His words are what bring the lost back home.